We don't brew beer to make money, we make money to brew better beer.

Our Brewery

We acknowledge that our industry is constantly changing. At Breakwater, we encourage change and in fact demand it from all our projects. This willingness provides for a quality product and an unmatched attention to detail.

Quality, Not Quantity

Beyond what's stated above, we believe in the following: It's not about having 50 beers on tap. It's not stack it high, flog it cheap. It's not about having a wine list as thick as a phone book. It's not about having a catalog of neon cocktails with flirty names. It's about quality, not quantity. At Breakwater, we'd like to invite you in with charm for a inclusive yet different drinking experience. Whether it's our unique beers brewed one batch at a time right next door, beers carefully aged in wooden casks, beers chosen to tell a different story, presented in style apropriate glassware, or one off experimental blends painstakingly handcrafted with the utmost creativity, it's about quality, not quantity.

Whether it's our double IPA's made with vastly different types of hops, hand-selected grains from our finest maltsters. Our water managed for immaculate body and spirit of the beer, it's about quality, not quantity. At Breakwater, superiority comes from simplicity. So relax, sit back and please do stay for a while. Because we all seem to have one thing in common: the thirst for quality.

We welcome you to Breakwater.

Our First Brews

We are the little guy. We dream big and expect big results but we are a brewery and bar that specializes in small-batch beer. Although we have much respect for larger micros, we prefer to keep it small, in-house and local. We believe our size allows our beers and drinks to shine through and you, the customer, will taste the difference. Our beer and drink selections allow us to get out into the community to collaborate and explore what the locale has to offer. Whether it's going to the farmers market on to find the ingredients for a summer seasonal or collaborating with the local coffee roaster for our coffee stouts, our main ingredient is our passion for beer and the community that we are proud to be within. We shall be working with our friends in the beer industry, regularly hosting invitational brews, called "collaborations" with both professional and amateur brewers alike.

Our Brewery

Our brewery, as in the piece of equipment we make the wort we ferment to become beer, is nearly 25 years old. Firstly we believe it was a Firkin brewhouse, then found a home in a pub in the north of England, then most notably in the BrewWharf once of Borough Market London. There, the brewery lived there for 10 years, used by our brewer Phil Lowry between 2010 and 2011, Angelo Scarnera now of Moncada from 2011 to 2014, when it closed; prior to them Chris Key of Bristol Beer Co, and even Chad Yakobsen brewed there, prior to his journey in creating Crooked Stave. Many other people came throught the doors of the BrewWharf during the years it was open. We were fortunate to be offered the brewery, now on show front and centre in our tap room. You can read something of the antics we got up to here: The History of BrewWharf Brewery

Our Location

you can find your way here by the map provided here - How to get to Breakwater Brewery and Taproom however if you'd like to know more about the history of our location read on: Our home once was a brewery, one of six that called Dover home in the mid nineteenth century, The Wellington Brewery, owned by a chap called Harding.

From the Brewery Trade Review:

"A ruthless demolition gang have been at work on the old brewery. The wooden sides have been pulled down by steel cables; the flint walls levelled, and the old flag-stoned cellar, many feet below the level of the nearby stream; has been filled with rubble. Shortly a modern factory will rise on the site. Time was when the brewers in their red stocking caps were busy about their vats, and horse drays left the premises with full barrels for the local inns. But the last traces of an old time brewery will soon have disappeared.

Through the ancient town of Dover, nestling in a deep chalk valley between the famous white cliffs, there runs a brisk little river, which, rising about three miles inland, tumbles over a number of falls, and eventually finds its way into the docks, having run for some of its latter course under buildings and streets. Until the coming of steam power, these various falls had considerable economic value, and, from the time of the earliest settlement of a civilised community on the stream, have been harnessed to drive water wheels to provide power for various industries. On this river Dour, there have been flour mills, timber yards, paper mills and breweries; all dependent upon the tumbling chalk stream for their power.

The very ancient building recently demolished was one of the last remaining breweries in Dover. Although it has not been used since about 1890, it has for many years been owned by the proprietors of a neighbouring flour mill, who have preserved it in the same state since the day when the last brew of ale ran out of the the vats some 70 years ago. The origins of the building are lost in obscurity; but it is thought to have been at one time a flour mill. In the late eighteenth century it was a paper mill, and about 1846 it became a brewery; known as Harding's Wellington Brewery, possibly taking its name from the Duke, who was at that time Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports.

A small waterwheel drove a pump which drew the liquor from a well; and also drove a grinder for the malted barley. This wheel, 18 ft. 6 in. in diameter, was situated on the backwater stream of the flour mill, and could presumably only run when there was an excess of water, or by mutual arrangement with the miller. The wheel has been kept in good repair, and at the moment of writing, although no doubt doomed to be broken up, is still in running order. The large gear wheel on the side, drove a small pinion on a shaft which extended about 35 ft. under ground to the brewery building situated off to the left of the picture.

The writer is (perhaps unfortunately) more familiar with the end product of brewing than the process thereof; but among other equipment in the building were a number of vats on the first floor, protruding into the cellar below; and a furnace heating a large copper set in brickwork. Above this was a tank, from which the copper was filled.

Three of the vats had a diameter of 5 ft., and one, 6 ft. 9 in. The brick seating of the copper (removed some years ago) was 7 ft. 6 in. No doubt the output from this brewery was small, even for those days. Whether the building made a satisfactory brewery is possibly open to question, since as a paper mill the top storey, of wood, was so constructed that sliding boards could be opened to admit a draught of fresh air for drying the paper. Even when closed, the building must have been a draughty one in windy weather. But ill adapted or not, it became one of Dover's thriving breweries, of which there were six in the town in the mid nineteenth century.

In 1890 brewing ceased; but my father tells me that as a boy he can recall the brewers working in their red woollen caps, and the very pleasant aroma which hung round the building! Its proximity to the flour mill was no doubt an attraction to the dusty, dry throated millers. The enormous technical strides in the industry over the past 50 years must make this old brewery appear like a museum piece; but that it should have been so long preserved, with its splashing wheel, its hooped, oaken vats, and ancient furnace, is not without interest; and who is to say that its product was not as well enjoyed by the thirsty in the mid-nineteenth century as the modern beverage is today?"

That building has been demolished, in 1963. We're housed in the front of the same footprint, in a newer building.